Crew Had No Idea Of Rogers' Plans

The Crew tried to gauge Robbie Rogers’ interest in returning to the league before sending his rights to Chicago, technical director Brian Bliss said.

After the former Crew midfielder trained with Los Angeles last week while publicly mulling a return to MLS, Rogers is the subject of a rights battle between the Fire and the Galaxy. Although he had spent the previous year playing in England before announcing he gay and was stepping away from the sport in mid-February, Rogers was still the property of the Crew because the club had made him a qualifying contract offer at the end of the 2011 season.

Now with Rogers stating his preference to stay close to his family and play for the Galaxy and the Fire front office trying to convince him to play in Chicago, Bliss said the Crew did not know what was ahead for the midfielder.

“We had no idea,” Bliss said. “We had talked to his agent just after he got injured or was getting ready to come off of injury or whatever it was when he was at Stevenage. We talked to his agent and said, ‘what’s going to happen when his loan is out with Stevenage? Is he going back to Leeds? Is he coming home? What’s he doing?’ (The agent) said, ‘To be honest with you, I don’t know. I’ll keep you posted as we go.’ ”

Rogers had initially signed with Leeds United but was loaned to Stevenage last August, where he finished out the season. After that conversation, Bliss said, there were no further updates on Rogers’ plans.

As the Crew and Fire worked out a deal to swap Chicago’s Dominic Oduro for Columbus’ Dilly Duka, Bliss said the lack of idea on Rogers’ future plans made his rights a valuable bargaining chip. In essence, Bliss said the team was not sure what, if anything, Rogers’ rights were worth.

“We thought possibly if Leeds was going to terminate his deal and he was looking to play and he came back to the league and we had his rights we might have something,” Bliss said. “Without any clarity, we said, ‘You know what? If we have to use his rights to sweeten a deal and get it done, let’s do it.’ That’s kind of how it happened. We said, ‘Oh, we can throw this into the deal with Chicago and get the deal done.’ ”

Now as the Fire and Galaxy continue to posture for Rogers’ rights – and Seattle as well – the Crew is in the position of watching from the sidelines.

That’s just fine with Bliss.

“I don’t think we can look back at it and second-guess ourselves,” he said. “We didn’t know. Robbie didn’t know at the time, and he still may not play. We don’t know. I know some of the quotes he’s had in the paper and I think Chicago is probably trying to work something out with him, but he’s been pretty adamant about his quotes. Because we don’t have his rights, I’m really disinterested in what happens.

“I wish him well and hope he does well and I’d like to see him back in the league, but in the end if he ends up out in L.A. or in Chicago, I’m indifferent.”